CARVED FISH POTTERY
This is my new line of hand carved fish pottery. The images are first freehand drawn with a pencil on damp pre-fired clay. They are then hand carved as a bas relief to allow them to stand out against the glazed background of the piece. For some pieces, the carved area is left unglazed. For the older pieces, the image was simply carved into the clay and then glazed over.
I have also started to colorize some of the images, as shown in the yellow fin tuna mug. The process of creating the color glazed yellow fin tuna was somewhat different than that of most of my pottery. The clay was thrown on an electric wheel and let dry to a leather hard state. I then drew the image with a pencil on the clay and hand carved out the image. The colors on the fish were hand applied in fine detail using Mayco Stroke and Coat Wonderglazes. This is one of the few instances where I do not mix my own glaze. Applying the colored glazes required several hours because of the detail. This was done before dipping the mug in a blue ash glaze to achieve the background blue color of the mug. The piece was then both bisque fired and glazed fired up to about 2,300 degrees F. internal kiln temperature for each firing.
